Crouching Tiger, Hidden Agenda

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/magazine/25Style.China.t.html

Mao Now (Ross Terrill - The Wilson Quarterly)

Mao Now (Ross Terrill - The Wilson Quarterly)
January 22, 2007
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?

fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=202988

In the early 1990s, a story circulated among Chinese taxi drivers
about an eight- car traffic accident in Guangzhou that resulted in
injuries to seven of the drivers involved; the eighth, unscathed, had a
Mao portrait attached to his windshield as a talisman. The story fueled
Mao fever (Mao re) in China, with shopkeepers offering busts of Mao
that glowed in the dark and alarm clocks with Red Guards waving Mao's
little red book at each tick of the clock. Mao temples appeared in some
villages, with a serene portrait of the Chairman on the altar.
Transmuted uses of Mao continue today. Nightclub singers in Beijing
croon songs that cite Mao's words. Youths dine in "Cultural Revolution-
style" cafés off rough- hewn tables with Mao quotations on the wall,
eating basic peasant fare as they answer their cell phones and chat
about love or the stock market.

This nonpolitical treatment of Mao Zedong (1893–1976) is an escape that
fits a Chinese tradition. When floods hit the Yangzi valley and farmers
clutch Mao memorabilia to ward off the rushing waters, it is
reminiscent of Chinese Buddhists over the centuries clutching images or
statues of Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy, to keep them safe and make
them prosperous. Following the eclectic nature of Chinese popular
beliefs, Mao is added to the panoply of faith.

But where is Mao the totalitarian? Each of the major nations that
experienced an authoritarian regime in the 20th century emerged in its
own way from the trauma. Japan, Germany, Italy, even Russia departed
politically from systems that brought massive war and repression.
China, still ruled by a communist party, has been ambiguous about Mao.
Although Mao's portrait and tomb dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart
of Beijing, Mao himself— unlike Stalin in Russia or Hitler in ­Germany—
has floated benignly into a nether zone as if somehow he was not a
political figure at all, let alone the architect of China's communist
state.

The cab drivers, farmers, pop singers, and shopkeepers are really only
following the lead of the Chinese Communist Party, which does not quite
know how to handle Mao's legacy. New history textbooks approved for
initial use in Shanghai have largely brushed Mao out of China's
20th-century story. China has abandoned Mao's policies but not faced
the structural and philosophical issues involved in Maoism— and
probably won't until the Party's monopoly on political power comes to
an end. Yet unless China gets the Mao story correct, it may not have a
happy political future.

The moral compass of the Mao era has gone, unregretted. But money
making, national glory, and a veil over the past in the name of "good
feelings" are not enough to replace it. Can a society that lived by the
ideas of Confucianism for two millennia, and later by Mao's political
athleticism, be content with amnesia about the Mao era and the absence
of a believed public philosophy?

In a recent biography, Mao: The Unknown Story (2006), Jung Chang and
Jon Halliday pile up evidence that Mao was a monster to eclipse Stalin
and probably Hitler and Lenin as well. "Absolute selfishness and
irresponsibility lay at the heart of Mao's outlook" from his teens to
his dotage, say the authors. In a second influential volume, The
Private Life of Chairman Mao (1995), Mao's physician Li Zhisui portrays
the Chairman as exceedingly selfish, jealous, and promiscuous. Soon
after his book came out, Dr. Li came to speak at Harvard, and I showed
him around the campus. "Three words did not exist for Mao," the gentle
doctor remarked as we strolled. "Regret, love, mercy." These two books—
both written from outside China— explain the Mao era in China as
essentially the consequence of having an evil man at the helm.

Certainly Mao's rule was destructive. Tens of millions of Chinese died
in the forced collectivization of the Great Leap Forward of 1958–59,
victims of Mao's willful utopianism and cruelty. Millions more died,
and tens of millions had their lives ruined, during the Cultural
Revolution of the 1960s. Practicing brinkmanship toward India, Taiwan,
and the Soviet Union, Mao declared that a loss of hundreds of millions
of Chinese in a nuclear war would be a setback China could readily
digest.

Yet "bad man" does not adequately sum up Mao and his legacy. To believe
so would be to embrace the moral absolutism of communism itself, with
its quick verdicts ("enemy of the people," "hero of the proletariat"),
and to repeat the manipulations of official Chinese imperial history,
in which even a flood or earthquake "proved" the evil character of the
emperor. Were the "good men" around bad man Mao blind to his failings
for so many decades? Were the hundreds of millions of Chinese who bowed
before Mao's portrait and wept at the sight of him out of their minds?

Mao made history; at the same time, history made Mao. In addition to
looking at Mao's failings as a human being, we must look at the
structures and pressures that turned whim into tyranny. At the ideas
Mao wielded. At the evaporation— in Mao's case, as in that of several
other dictators— of youthful idealism and exactitude. Above all, at the
seduction of a "freedom" bestowed from above by a party- state that
believed it knew what was best for the citizenry.

In a Jesus was dismembered for speaking out… . He who speaks out does
not necessarily transgress, and even if he does transgress, this is but
a small matter to a wise man." Immediately we face a puzzle: Young Mao
was an ardent individualist. In his years at the teachers' training
college he attended in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, Mao's
credo became the self- realization of the individual. "Wherever there
is repression of the individual," he wrote in the margin of a
translation of Friedrich Paulsen's System of Ethics (1889), "wherever
there are acts contrary to the nature of the individual, there can be
no greater crime." His first published newspaper work, written in 1919,
was a plea for the liberation of women, a passionate nine- part
commentary on the suicide of a young woman in Changsha moments before
her arranged marriage.

Mao at 24 saw the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an outbreak of freedom
for the individual that lit the way for China. A young female friend
objected, "It's all very well to say establish communism, but lots of
heads are going to fall." Mao, who had recently read Marx and Engel's
Communist Manifesto, retorted, "Heads will fall, heads will be chopped
off, of course. But just think how good communism is! The state won't
bother us anymore, you women will be free, marriage problems won't
plague you anymore." Although these words hint at Mao's later
callousness about human life, it is striking that he viewed Lenin's
revolution in terms of the "marriage problems" of individual women.

The anarchism of Peter Kropotkin, the author of Mutual Aid (1902), had
a strong hold on Mao until he was nearly 30. A great virtue of the
Russian anarchist, Mao felt, was that "he begins by understanding the
common people." Anarchism in Mao's perception was linked with
Prometheanism; Friedrich Nietzsche was also among his early
enthusiasms. The Promethean individual would prepare for his heroic
role by taking cold baths, running up mountains, and studying books in
the noisiest possible places. This prefigures the fascism to come in
Mao's Cultural Revolution, just as fascism in Europe owed a debt to
Nietzsche. At the time, however, Mao's individualism was nurtured by
the influence of a Chinese professor at Changsha who had imbibed the
idealist liberalism of T. H. Green, the late-19th-century British
philosopher.

Mao was a rebel before becoming a communist. The psychological root of
his rebelliousness was hostility to his father, and, by extension, to
other authority figures. The political root was dismay at China's
weakness and disarray in the face of foreign encroachment, shared by
most informed Chinese of the period. Mao's chief use for the steeled
individual was as a fighter for justice and China's salvation. "The
principal aim of physical education," he wrote in 1917 in New Youth
magazine, "is military heroism." The authoritarian strain in Mao's
individualism was already present.

Eventually, Mao's respect for individual freedom collapsed. There were
four causes. One was the powerful current of nationalism in
early-20th-century China; the cry to rescue the nation eclipsed the cry
for the self- realization of the individual. A second was the large
role of war in China from the 1920s to the '40s. Pervasive violence
made political debate a luxury and favored repression. A third was
Mao's embrace of Marxist ideas of class, central economic planning, and
communist party organization. Fourth was the hangover in Mao's mind and
Chinese society generally of a paternalistic imperial mentality.

In the end, Mao Zedong, facilitated by Stalin, put the population of
the world's largest nation under a regimen that combined Leninism, the
paternalism of early Chinese ­sage- rulers, and, by the 1960s, a
hysteria and military romanticism that amounted to fascism Chinese-
style.

The imperative of national salvation was the first factor working
against Mao's attraction to freedom. Mao was mildly attracted to a
movement comparable in spirit to Europe's Enlightenment that sprang
into existence in China in 1919. Named May Fourth (after the date of an
initial student demonstration), it aimed at modernizing China by
embracing quasi- Western ideas of individualism, democracy, and
science. Liberated individuals would rescue China. But May Fourth soon
split in two, a left wing jumping to Marxist collectivism and a right
wing sticking with individualism. Leftists, including the 27- year- old
Mao, founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921.

Bolshevism helped Mao be progressive and anti- Western at the same
time. Opposition to the West was necessary to many young Chinese
leftists, despite the appeal of Western ideas, because of British and
other foreign bullying of China since the Opium War of 1839–42. From
Lenin, Mao learned that social justice and national salvation could
come as one package. Leninism— and to a lesser degree Marxism— joined
anarchism, nationalism, and individualism in the rag bag of Mao's
political ideas. It was Lenin who showed Mao his road to power. Anti-
imperialism was going to be for Mao, as it was for Lenin, the framework
for revolution. But this anti- imperialist— soon anti-­Japanese— nation
alism that Mao injected into the Chinese Revolution negated individual
freedom.

In the 1930s, Mao argued to the semi criminal secret society Gelaohui
(Elder Brother Club) that its principles and the CCP's were "quite
close— especially as regards our enemies and the road to salvation." Of
course, the threat of enemies was the central point. In his appeal to
non- Han "minority" peoples during the Long March of 1935–36, when Mao
emerged as the CCP's top leader as the Communists retreated before
Chiang Kai- shek's Nationalist forces, Mao challenged Mon golians to
"preserve the glory of the era of Genghis Khan" by cooperating with the
Communists. Pressing the Muslims to support him, he told them that this
would ensure the "national revival of the Turks." Of course, Chinese
nationalism had turned Mao into a trickster. After the wars with Japan
and Chiang Kai- shek were over, there would be no common cause with the
Gelaohui, no freedom for the Mongolians or the Muslims of Xinjiang.

The violence that continually rippled through China was another force
militating against individual freedom. After the death in 1925 of Sun
Yat- sen, a leader in the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 and a
founder of the Nationalist movement, the gun was prominent in Chinese
public life. Sun's wavering leadership gave way to warlordism, a
violent rupture of the tenuous coalition of Nationalists and Communists
in 1927, and growing incursions by Japan beginning in 1931. Guns were
to freedom as a cat is to mice. From the time Mao used force to
confiscate the holdings of Hunan landowners in 1925, when he was just
one of many CCP leaders, his political life cannot be understood aside
from violence, both the wars he waged and those waged against him. As
he sought to organize farmers in a remote mountain region, he remarked,
"The struggle in the border area is exclusively military. The Party and
the masses have to be placed on a war footing." Mao spoke of
"criticizing the Nationalists by means of a machine gun."

A third enemy of freedom was the class, organizational, and economic
theory Mao drew from Marx and Lenin. Here Mao's story is similar to
that of Stalin, Castro, and others. Class theory has intrinsic
distortions; people often do not act as members of an economic class.
Class labeling became especially inimical to freedom when Mao was
forced to rely on farmers rather than workers as the key class in
Copyright The Wilson Quarterly

China's revolution. Anyone who pointed out this departure from Marx's
theory of proletarian revolution was stamped out as a renegade.

Eventually, class became little more than a convenient way to demarcate
friends and enemies of the moment. Hence, longtime colleague and
expected successor Liu Shaoqi was "discovered" by Mao in the 1960s to
be a "bourgeois" who had "sneaked into the Party." Never mind that Mao
and Liu had worked together as leftist organizers on and off since
1922.

Guggenheim mulls museum project in Beijing

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?

type=worldNews&storyID=2007-02-09T055820Z_01_PEK217870_RTRUKOC_0_US-
CHINA-GUGGENHEIM.xml

BEIJING, Feb 9 (Reuters Life!) - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
is considering developing a museum project in Beijing, its director
said on Friday during a visit to China.

The foundation is looking at several possibilities, including a
five-year museum collaboration that could be located at a converted
factory adjacent to Beijing's 798 art district, said Thomas Krens,
director of the New York based foundation.

Other possibilities could include cooperation with Chinese government
bodies along the lines of an existing partnership with the State
Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

On Saturday, the Guggenheim premiers in Beijing an exhibition of 130
works of American art, from the Colonial era through contemporary art.
The exhibition will travel to Shanghai in May and June.

The foundation said in July that it would build a museum in the Arab
Gulf city of Abu Dhabi, to be designed by Frank Gehry. It already has
museums in New York, Bilbao, Spain, Venice, Berlin, and Las Vegas.

The Parisian modern art museum, the Pompidou Centre, plans to open an
annex in Shanghai by 2010, its president said in a January interview
with French newspaper Le Monde.

ART IN AMERICA opened last night

ART IN AMERICA: THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF INNOVATION: FIRST SURVEY
EXHIBITION OF AMERICAN ART PRESENTED IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Terra
Foundation for American Art

Tour: Beijing: National Art Museum of China
February 10–April 5, 2007
Shanghai: Shanghai Museum, jointly with Museum of Contemporary Art
Shanghai
May 1–June 30, 2007

(New York, NY – December 5, 2006) The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation, New York, in partnership with the Terra Foundation for
American Art, Chicago, has organized the first survey of American art
to be presented in the People's Republic of China. Art in America:
Three Hundred Years of Innovation will feature approximately 130
important works of American art spanning the Colonial period to the
present age, focusing on painting drawn from major U.S. and European
collections, including the Terra Foundation and Guggenheim Foundation.
The exhibition will premiere in Beijing at the National Art Museum of
China, from February 10 through April 5, 2007, and will travel to
Shanghai where it will be co-presented by the Shanghai Museum and the
Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, from May 1 to June 30, 2007.

"The Guggenheim's commitment to China has been central to its identity
and strategy as a global cultural institution," said Thomas Krens,
Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. "We are pleased to work
with our museum partners in Beijing and Shanghai to realize Art in
America, the first historical survey of American art ever presented in
China. The exhibition offers an extraordinary view of our nation's
cultural and historical developments and bold creative principles. This
project promises to increase understanding of American history and
culture among the Chinese public, and hopefully can be an inspirational
threshold for greater dialogue between the peoples and cultures of
America and China."

"An international lens informs all that we do at the Terra
Foundation," said Elizabeth Glassman, president and CEO, Terra
Foundation for American Art. "In the largest sense, our goal for Art in
America is to expand and enrich knowledge of American art among Chinese
audiences. By revealing the complexities of our nation's history and
artistic heritage, we seek to distinguish our own culture while
simultaneously forging new and enduring connections with the Chinese.
We are pleased to partner with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in
this historic exhibition and extend our thanks to all the lenders for
sharing their treasurers with the world."

Alcoa Foundation is pleased to support another important Guggenheim
cultural exchange, Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation, and we look
forward to sharing these rich representations of the American
experience with the Chinese people, particularly the opportunity to
bring this history to a variety of regional audiences through the
educational program," said Alain Belda, Chairman and CEO of Alcoa. "We
congratulate the Guggenheim for assembling this impressive set of
works."

"It was in 1998 that the Guggenheim first approached the Henry Luce
Foundation with the exciting idea for the exhibition and catalogue Art
in America," said the foundation's president, Michael Gilligan. "Given
our longstanding commitment to promoting better understanding between
America and China and to bringing the work of American artists to more
widespread attention, this is a natural fit. We are honored to assist
in this important undertaking to bring 300 years of American art to
China, and we look forward to sharing this artistic heritage with the
Chinese people, who have long shared theirs with us."

Exhibition Overview
Divided into six historical periods, Art in America: Three Hundred
Years of Innovation demonstrates how the art of each era both reflected
and contributed to a complex visual narrative of the nation during
times of discovery, growth, and experimentation. The exhibition
explores issues of identity, creation, innovation, and
scale—characteristics integral to the American consciousness and
derived in part from the variety and vastness of the cultural,
political, ethnic, economic, and natural landscapes of the United
States. The six sections, each marking significant phases of the
country's development, are: Colonization and Rebellion (1700–1830);
Expansion and Fragmentation (1830–1880); Cosmopolitanism and
Nationalism (1880–1915); Modernism and Regionalism (1915–1945);
Prosperity and Disillusionment (1945–1980); and Multiculturalism and
Globalization (1980–present).

The exhibition features approximately 120 artists from the early 18th
century to the present and includes: John Singleton Copley; Benjamin
West; Charles Willson Peale; Gilbert Stuart; George Catlin; Frederic
Edwin Church; Edward Hicks; Winslow Homer; Martin Johnson Heade; John
Singer Sargent; Albert Bierstadt; Mary Cassatt; Childe Hassam;
Frederick Remington; Marsden Hartley; Robert Henri; George Bellows;
Charles Demuth; Georgia O'Keeffe; Stuart Davis; Thomas Hart Benton;
Grant Wood; Norman Rockwell; Jackson Pollock; Willem de Kooning; Mark
Rothko; Robert Motherwell; Robert Rauschenberg; Jasper Johns; Andy
Warhol; Roy Lichtenstein; Donald Judd, Dan Flavin; Brice Marden; Chuck
Close; Lawrence Weiner; Richard Prince; Keith Haring; Jean-Michel
Basquiat; Jeff Koons; Felix Gonzalez-Torres; Kara Walker; and Matthew
Barney, among many others.

Highlights of the exhibition include: Benjamin West's Penn's Treaty
with the Indians (1771–72, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts); Charles
Willson Peale's George Washington (ca. 1780–82, Walton Family
Foundation); Henry Inman's Yoholo-Micco (1832–33, High Museum of Art,
Atlanta); Thomas Cole's Landscape with Figures: A Scene from "The Last
of the Mohicans" (1826, Terra Foundation for American Art); George
Caleb Bingham's Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland
Gap (1851–52, Mildred Lane Kemper Museum of Art, Washington University,
St. Louis, Missouri); Asher B. Durand's A Symbol (1856, Hunter Museum
of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee); Edward P. Moran's The
Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World (1886, Museum
of the City of New York); Winslow Homer's Watching the Breakers: A High
Sea (1896, The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, New York); Walt Kuhn's
Clown with Drum (1942, Terra Foundation for American Art); Marsden
Hartley's Painting No. 50 (1914–15, Terra Foundation for American Art);
Edward Hopper's Corn Hill (Truro, Cape Cod) (1930, Marion Koogler McNay
Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas); Jackson Pollock's The Moon-Woman
(1942, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy); Andy Warhol's Race
Riot (1963, Daros Collection, Zurich, Switzerland); Willem de Kooning's
Composition (1955, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum); Ed Ruscha's Back of
Hollywood (1977, Musée d'art contemporain, Lyon, France); Dan Flavin's
green crossing green (to Piet Mondrian who lacked green) (1966, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, Panza Collection); Jean-Michel Basquiat's Man
from Naples (1982, Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa); Matthew Barney's
Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum); Kara
Walker's Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On)
(2000, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum); and John Currin's Thanksgiving
(2003, Tate Gallery), to name a few.

The curatorial team of the exhibition has been led by Thomas Krens,
Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The following curators of
American art contributed to the exhibition: Susan Davidson, Senior
Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Elizabeth Kennedy, Curator of
the Collection, Terra Foundation for American Art; Nancy Mowll
Matthews, Eugenie Prendergast Senior Curator of 19th-and 20th-Century
Art, Williams College Museum of Art.

The exhibition benefited from the expertise of the following scholars
of American art and modernism: Michael Leja, Professor of Art History,
University of Pennsylvania; Robert Rosenblum, The Stephen and Nan Swid
Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and John Wilmerding, The
Christopher B. Sarofim Professor of American Art, Princeton University.

Publication
A fully illustrated color catalogue published in both English and
Chinese will accompany the exhibition. Michael Leja, Professor of Art
History at the University of Pennsylvania, contributes a main essay
outlining the major movements in American art from the Colonial period
to the present. Additionally, each section contains an overview essay
written by a leading scholar of the period. Margaretta M. Lovell
contributes a text on early American portraiture; David M. Lubin writes
on 19th-century art and material culture; Nancy Mowll Matthews examines
Americans abroad and at home; Justin Wolff investigates the impact of
industrialization on American art; Robert Rosenblum explores America's
rise as a world art power in the postwar period; and Susan Cross
comments on the issues of American art in a global context. Shorter
essays on relevant thematic topics are also included: Patricia Johnson
and Jessica Lanier discuss Chinese influences on early American visual
culture; Anthony Lee contributes an essay on Chinese-American artists
and the Chinese Diaspora in the United States; and Elizabeth Kennedy
addresses the myth of the American cowboy.

Education Program
The educational program for Art in America: Three Hundred Years of
Innovation will involve a dynamic cross-cultural exchange between the
Guggenheim education staff and their curatorial and education
colleagues at the museums in China. The exchange will focus on learning
about the educational philosophies and approaches employed by each
institution and result in the co-development of exhibition-related
public programs relevant to the regional audiences of the host venues.
Two working sessions, one in New York and the other in China, will
ensure that interpretive materials and educational activities prepared
for this exhibition best serve Chinese audiences and reflect a true
exchange between Asian and Western cultures. A full-color brochure will
accompany the exhibition and be available to museum visitors free of
charge.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to
promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, and
other manifestations of visual culture, primarily of the modern and
contemporary periods, and to the collection, conservation, and study of
the art of our time. The Foundation realizes this mission through
exceptional exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and
publications, and strives to engage and educate an increasingly diverse
international audience through its unique network of museums and
cultural partnerships. Currently the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
owns and operates three museums: the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue,
New York City; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in
Venice, Italy; and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas. The
Foundation also provides programming and management for two other
museums in Europe that bear its name, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and
the Deutsche Guggenheim, in Berlin. Through a unique alliance
agreement, the Guggenheim Foundation shares its collections and
collaborates on programming with the State Hermitage Museum in St.
Petersburg and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Dating to 1996, when the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation collection
was shown at the Shanghai Museum as one of the first exhibitions of
modern Western art in China, the Guggenheim's commitment to China has
been central to its identity and strategy as a global cultural
institution. In 1998, the Guggenheim presented China: 5000 Years, an
unprecedented masterpiece survey of Chinese art, archeology, and
culture from ancient to modern periods, drawn from China's major
museums and organized in cooperation with the P.R.C. Ministry of
Culture. Recently, the museum established a curatorial position for
Asian art, the first within a modern and contemporary art museum in the
west. In 2008, the Guggenheim Museum will present the first museum
retrospective of the work of contemporary Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang.

Terra Foundation for American Art
The Terra Foundation for American Art is committed to fostering
innovative projects that emphasize multinational perspectives and
participation. Throughout its 27-year history, the Terra Foundation has
supported exhibitions, scholarship, and educational programs designed
to engage individuals around the globe in an enriched and enriching
dialogue on American art. The Terra Foundation's collection of American
art spans the colonial era through 1945, and includes more than seven
hundred works. Currently, the Terra Foundation operates the Musée d'Art
Américain Giverny; actively lends works in its collection to national
and international exhibitions that advance American art scholarship;
awards grants to exhibitions and programs that explore American art in
Europe, Canada, Latin America, and now, Asia; and supports scholars
through residential fellowships at the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
as well as through travel grants offered through the Courtauld
Institute of Art in London, the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für
Nordamerikastudien in Berlin, and l'Institut national d'histoire de
l'art in Paris.